This invention is directed to a method whereby zeaxanthins and xanthophylls can be synthetically produced without the necessity for isolating these materials from their natural source.
Zeaxanthin and xanthophylls are widely distributed in nature, occurring in green plants, as well as in the egg yolks and in animal fats. It is well known that during the winter months when the diet of domestic animals is low in zeaxanthins and xanthophyll, the color of egg yolks, milk fat and the fat of fowls becomes bleached, which is caused by the lack of zeaxanthin and xanthophyll pigments in the diet of animals. It is also well known that this lack in the diet of animals can be readily corrected by an addition of zeaxanthin or xanthophylls to animal feeds during the winter months. Furthermore, zeaxanthin and xanthophylls serve as valuable yellow food and beverage colorants for human consumption. Therefore, these colorants are widely utilized in coloring foodstuffs, including beverages, cosmetic and pharmaceutical preparations.
In the past, zeaxanthins and xanthophylls have been produced by isolating these materials from their natural source, such as green plants and vegetables. This procedure is extremely disadvantageous due to the fact that these coloring materials occur in small amounts in the green plants or vegetables must be utilized in order to isolate a small amount of these coloring materials. Additionally, the process whereby these coloring materials are isolated from green plants and vegetables is extremely cumbersome and uneconomical. Up until the present time, there has been no economic procedure for directly chemically synthesizing these coloring materials without isolating these materials from their natural source. Therefore, it has been long desired in the art to provide a method for chemically synthesizing these coloring materials so as to eliminate the necessity of isolating these materials from their natural source.